The Katrina Myth

As the news swirls around New Orleans' seemingly near miss under the surge of Hurricane Gustav, let's not forget the Katrina legacy.

The non-partisan group Levees.org recently released this video to address the stubborn myths that still remain three years after Katrina. Clearly, without a proper grasp of the facts surrounding the civil engineering failures during Katrina, we will not push for the change needed to bring ourselves up to the standards needed to protect New Orleans and other U.S. cities.

The myths:

1) Katrina was a natural disaster. (False)
2) New Orleans is located in the wrong place and should be relocated. (False)
3) New Orleans is entirely below sea level. (False)
4) The New Orleans situation is unique due to its geography. (False)
5) The authorities are aware of the New Orleans problem and working hard to address it. (False)

For more information, go to levees.org

Follow Raymond Leon Roker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/raymondroker

Comments

[thedirtman]

It's tough being an environmental scientist anymore . My positions aren't backed by anyone's dollars.

The video made some important points but I would never put my seal of approval on it. The situation is a more complicated and calls for more than what could be explained in a ten minutes video. I also refuse to play the villain in a political game that involves the homes of others. Allow me to put it this way. Baton Rouge is not a bad place either. The Mississippi River is deep enough to allow ships that far..

[Bienville]

It's not the depth of the channel alone that matters. The channel depth is maintained anyway. Baton Rouge is more than a 100 miles farther upriver than New Orelans (itself 100 miles from the Gulf). How far is practical for shipping seems a more relevant question.

[standard]

I never understood why the press allowed the Bush administration to lump together the natural disaster of the rains and wind of hurricane Katrina (from which Mississippi, Alabama and much of Louisiana have recovered, if slowly) and entirely man-made disaster of the flooding caused by the levees--un­der-funded by the Republicans and so, under-engineered by the Army--bursting (from which parts of New Orleans have still not recovered, three years later).

Your analysis is correct.

[mamacat]

Thank you for a very good video.

It is amazing to see what threat the Sacramento area is under, and what threat exists to the water supply for all of California.
One more reason to vote for competent leadership.

Not mentioned about Sacramento is the amount of flooding that would accompany a one meter rise in sea levels. The amount of land that would be inundated in the general area inland of the San Francisco Bay is huge.

[RepublicanBrain]

Some of the points raised in the video are true, and some are false. Particularly, I'm drawn to number 2 as a really faulty problem. New Orleans's location is good due to certain factors, like being a deepwater port. However, this causes it's own share of problems by being so close to the sea. This is a problem in every port city. Even the video admits this.

Another problem is that the city is parts of the city are not below sea level. This is true. However, when the seas change, like Katrina, places that are above sea level get swept off. Look at the Boxing Day Tsunami; it hit places that were above sea level as well.

Another problem that I had with the video is that it claims that conditions are not unique to New Orleans. However, they actually are. They claim that levees can be in a state of active failures in other places, but New Orleans is on a path that hurricanes can strike. Other cities that the video mentions, like Louisville, Baltimore, or London, are not hit by hurricanes. Katrina was also a unique storm due to it's power. Being so close to sea level (if not under it), being on the Gulf of Mexico, with it's warm waters, are situations that lead to such disasters.

Truth is nice, but videos like that deserve to air the whole truth and not just aim at dispelling myths, if they want to be taken seriously.

[RDixon]

You must have missed the memo.
The word surge can now only be used to describe how great things are going in Iraq.

The msm reporters obviously got it though as during 5 hours of straight hurricane coverage on various news channels, I think I may have heard the word surge 7 times.